Athenaeum’s “200 Years” Exhibit Closing at Discover Portsmouth

The last grains of sand are slipping through the hourglass if you wish to see “200 Years of the Portsmouth Athenaeum: Collect, Preserve, Share” at Discover Portsmouth. This exhibit will close at 8 p.m. after Art-Round-Town on Friday, Sept. 1, 2017.

Thank you to co-curators Richard Candee, Robert Chase, Tom Hardiman, Carolyn Marvin and James Smith with help from Phineas Graphics on creating a comprehensive 200th anniversary tribute that includes rare books, photos, lithographs, paintings, and artifacts selected from the unique Portsmouth Athenaeum collection. This includes a gigantic poster for Frank Jones Ale, discovered under the porch ceiling of a local home. Also on display from a private collection is the painting of Mayor Christopher S. Toppan (1800-1861) by artist Joseph G. Cole in 1830. Toppan was a Proprietor and bequeathed $1,000 in 1861 for a book fund that still continues today.

Special thank you to Tom Clark of TCPictures.NET for creating the exhibit’s popular “then and now” video of Congress Street, a historic journey from the Discover Portsmouth to the Portsmouth Athenaeum using images from the Athenaeum Photographic Collection. Stay tuned later this year for Tom’s upcoming “Picture Portsmouth,” a documentary that features the evolution of Market Square as imagined from its earliest days to the present by using computer-generated models and images from the Athenaeum collection.

Author John Lillard will present a talk about his new book "Playing War: Wargaming and U.S. Navy Preparations for World War II". The book explores wargaming at the Naval War College during the 20s and 30s, and how it helped the Navy prepare for the war against Japan.

Historic Portsmouth Chamber Music Series presents Jose Lezcano with String Ensemble. Guitarist Jose Lezcano, violinist Jennifer Elowitch, and members of the Portland Chamber Music Festival team up to play a program of music for guitar and strings. The program, "Mediterranean Muses & Iberian Images" includes works by Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (his sunny and lyrical masterpiece, the Guitar Quintet), Luigi Boccherini (the exciting Fandango from his Quintet in D minor for guitar and strings), and a virtuoso Sonata Concertante for guitar and violin by Paganini. Lezcano will also present one of his compositions for guitar and strings, Mojito y Habano in a premiere performance.

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The Athenæum today continues this long tradition of mutual improvement by maintaining a library of over 40,000 volumes and an archive of manuscripts, photographs, objects, and ephemera relating to local history. It also sponsors exhibitions, concerts, lectures, and other educational and cultural programs.